#writing

Write about small, self-contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory. If you remember them, it's because they contain a larger truth that your readers will recognize in their own lives. Think small and you'll wind up finding the big themes in your family saga. ↗

— William Knowlton Zinsser

#writing #family

I don't want to analyze myself or anything, but I think, in fact I know this to be true, that I enter the world through what I write. I grew up believing, and continue to believe, that I am a screw-up, that growing up with my family and friends, I had nothing to offer in any conversation. But when I started writing, suddenly there was something that I brought to the party that was at a high-enough level. ↗

— Aaron Sorkin

#family

Delicious days ahead for solitude and writing and, oh yes, the holiday meal with family. Live with my characters until term starts in 2012! ↗

— Stella Atrium

#characters #writing #writing-craft #writing-life #family

And, as always, I thank my family who are an amazing network of support. ↗

— Laisha Rosnau

#blood-relations #fear #fishing #hopelessness #the-real-writing

I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip. ↗

— John Kennedy Toole

#dip #dunce #food #history #writing

She said she never wanted to have secrets from me nor from herself, which is why she wanted to write down everything that otherwise would be hard to talk about. As I said, later I understood that someone who flees into honesty like that fears something, fears that her life will fill with something that can no longer be shared, a genuine secret, indescribable, unutterable. ↗

— Sándor Márai

#fear #secrets #sharing-secrets #writing #life

I have no doubts that the Devil grins, As seas of ink I spatter. Ye gods, forgive my “literary” sins – The other kind don’t matter. ↗

— Robert W. Service

#forgiveness

Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed; an architectural one, where it is constructed; and finally, a textile one, where it is woven. ↗

— Walter Benjamin

#architecture

To what extent does anybody control his destiny? Life is very much like falling of the edge of a cliff. You have complete freedom to make all the choices you want to take on your way down. My characters choose to yearn and not lose hope even when the odds are completely against them. It doesn't make the landing at the end of that fall any less painful but, somehow, it helps them keep a little dignity their bone broken body. ↗

— Etgar Keret

#free-will #hope #humor #writing #freedom

He reads every book in his home but it is not enough. The country boy craves stories. He devours every poem and fable in his school and library. Still he hungers. For stories. ↗

— Jennifer Lanthier

#freedom-of-speech #journalism #prison #stamps #writing